Turkey will face renewed pressure to halt nuclear power plant construction

Following Tuesday's earthquake, Ankara can expect to come under renewed pressure to cancel construction of a nuclear power plant on Turkey's seismically active southern coast.

Environmentalists from Turkey, Cyprus, Greece and Canada, as well as Greenpeace, have warned of the risk of a second Chernobyl-type disaster if the planned 1,000 megawatt plant is built at Akkuyu Bay, west of the town of Silifke and about 80 km south-west of Mersin. The bay, an important tourist site, is unsuitable because it is just 20 km from the active Ecemis fault.

Fearful of the consequences of the plant being sited at Akkuyu, the Greek Ministry for the Aegean issued a report early this year which stated: "The existence of the South Anatolian fault in conjunction with the numerous faults in the Aegean makes this a potential site for a major earthquake" and months of aftershocks.

Turkey's last major quake (magnitude 5.1) struck Adana, just 125km northeast of the bay, while last week a quake (magnitude 5.8) was registered in Limassol on Cyprus, a similar distance from Akkuyu. Limassol is still experiencing aftershocks.

Greek scientists, using computers to simulate the spread of nuclear fall-out from an accident at a plant sited at the bay, said radioactive material could be scattered over Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Greece and Cyprus.

Cyprus would be the most seriously affected, particularly in summer when strong breezes could carry away almost all the fall-out from a ruptured plant.

Although a leading Turkish nuclear scientist, Mr Tolga Yarman, warned in the Toronto Star that Akkuyu was the "wrong place" to build such a facility, the Turkish government and companies tendering for the $4 billion project are reported to be planning to go ahead without carrying out seismological tests.

Canadian scientists working for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, the firm most likely to secure the contract, admit that tests made in 1983 by the Turkish Electricity Authority were "incomplete and inadequate in a number of areas."

Other tenders have been submitted by the French-German consortium, Nuclear Power International, and the Japanese multinational Mitsubishi, in collaboration with Westinghouse of the US.

The struggle between proponents and opponents has become a battle between a Goliath of big business, armed with money and influence, and a David represented by the environmental lobby, armed just with words.

In his article, Prof Yarman said that at this stage in its development, "Turkey is not ready for nuclear power. If it were a necessity, many more years of preparation would be required."

Other specialists also say it is not a necessity. The Akkuyu Bay plant would meet only 2 to 3 per cent of Turkey's electricity requirements, which could be met by harnessing natural gas. Turkey has two sources of plentiful cheap gas, Iran and Turkmenistan.